Commit syntax checker workflow

Path to file (view file on GitHub)

The original file is located at the following path:

.github / workflows / CI_commits.yml

This GitHub Actions workflow validates commit messages against the Conventional Commits specification. It is the shortest workflow in the repository: a single step, and no checkout.

Table of contents

  1. Workflow name
  2. Triggers
  3. Job
  4. Steps
  5. What a valid commit message looks like
  6. Fixing a rejected commit

Workflow name

  • name: Commits Syntax Checker

Triggers 

on:
  push:
  pull_request:

Both triggers are bare, with no branch filter, so the check runs on every branch and every pull request. You find out that a commit message is malformed on the branch, while it is still cheap to rewrite.

Job

  • check, named Conventional Commits, runs on ubuntu-24.04.

Steps 

- name: Validate commit messages
  uses: webiny/action-conventional-commits@v1.3.0

That is the entire job.

Note that there is no actions/checkout step. The action reads the commit messages from the GitHub API using the event payload, so it never needs a working copy of the repository. Adding a checkout step here would only make the job slower.

What a valid commit message looks like

The message must start with a type, an optional scope in parentheses, a colon, a space and a description:

<type>(<optional scope>): <description>

Valid examples:

feat: add dataset export to CSV
fix(auth): reject expired password reset tokens
docs: document the pytest workflow
refactor(dataset): extract rating logic into the service
test(hubfile): add repository tests for file lookup
chore: bump splent_framework to 1.7.1

Messages that fail the check:

updated stuff
Fix bug
feat add export

A breaking change is marked with ! before the colon:

feat(dataset)!: drop support for the legacy upload endpoint

Fixing a rejected commit

If the check fails, rewrite the offending message rather than adding a new commit on top. For the most recent commit:

git commit --amend -m "feat(dataset): add dataset export to CSV"
git push --force-with-lease

For an older commit in the branch, rewrite the range interactively and reword the commits that were rejected:

git rebase -i origin/main
git push --force-with-lease

Force pushing

Only force push to your own branch. Use --force-with-lease rather than --force, so that the push is refused if somebody else has pushed to the branch in the meantime.